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Dessert

Hot Caramel Sauce

A hot caramel sauce made with sugar, water, lemon rind, cinnamon, wine or brandy, simmered and served immediately.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hot Caramel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. In a saucepan, combine 4 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of water over medium heat.

  2. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon for 3-4 minutes until it turns a delicate brown color and the water evaporates.

Make the syrup

  1. In another saucepan, combine 6 ounces of sugar, the lemon rind, cinnamon, and 1 pint of cold water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then let it simmer for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the wine or brandy to the caramel and serve immediately.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Caramelizes to give a brown color and a deeper sweetness.
Wine or brandy
Adds aroma and a sharper, fruity flavor to the sauce.
Lemon rind
Contributes a bright citrus aroma to the syrup.
Cinnamon stick
Infuses warm spice aroma into the simmering syrup.

The step that matters

Stirring the caramel until it is only delicate brown. Sugar darkens very quickly once it begins to color, and overcooked caramel turns bitter. Constant stirring spreads the heat so the sugar browns evenly and stops at the right shade.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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